May, 2012

Japan National Route 245 It’s one thing to fuck with me, and quite another to fuck with my car. Maybe I wasn’t immediately smitten with Paul Kariya the night he turned up on my doorstep last summer. There wasn’t much to love. He’s a wimpy, small, 3 cylinder box on wheels, but I have definitely grown quite attached to my foster son, and I’d defend him just like he was my very own baby, like I would my little Lynxie. So, I definitely don’t appreciate when the creepy sleazy men in Japan try to make fucky with me and put little Paul Kariya in harm’s way.

It seems no Hockey Rehab post is complete without my latest tale of creepy sexual woe, and this installment shall be no exception. Friday night (tonight). After a week of constant stress and no sleep, I was almost tempted to stay home tonight, but instead I opted to go out for dinner and drown my sorrows in a sea of carbs and more carbs. It wasn’t going to be a late night, so I dropped my friend off at her aparto around 9PM, and proceeded to drive back to my little shack in the country the way I always do…

As soon as I got to the abandoned stretch of road where the trees become dense and the street lights vanish, a menacing looking black car pulled up in front of me and slammed on the brakes. I very nearly hit the guy, and since it was raining a bit, he’s lucky I didn’t completely hydroplane. Not only was I pissed off, I was really confused. Where did this guy come from? Why did he just stop in the middle of nowhere like that? In fairness, I had been quite immersed with my in-car karaoke, so it definitely wasn’t out of the realm of the possible that I just wasn’t paying enough attention and nearly hit someone. The thing that didn’t add up was why he would stop like he did in the middle of nowhere, on such an empty street, where our cars were the only sets of headlights for miles…

No harm was done. Nobody hit anyone. So I figured that was the end of it. The black vehicle pulled into the oncoming lane and waited for me to pass before heaving his car behind me in a cock-like manner. To me this was a telltale sign of your average skittish old person who very nearly got rammed by another car, and felt that it was probably safer to drive behind that car instead of in front of it, so I didn’t even bother getting a good look at the driver. However, it became clear quite quickly that this was no accidental near-collision, and that this man had been tailing me for awhile…

The car kept following behind me until we drove through a more cultivated area and the single lane road became a double lane road. Once he had the second lane to move around in he was free to try to stop me in the same idiotic manner as before – by pulling in front of me and slamming on the brakes again. Yeah… I was officially really fucking pissed now. At one point, when we were both at a stoplight, I was ready to drop the gloves. I had my seatbelt off and my hand ready to open the door, but, thankfully, we were forced to watch the presentation on the horrors of Japanese prisons (again) the night before during our monthly training session, so that whole, “Don’t get arrested in Japan, you’ll never get out in your lifetime,” thing was still pretty fresh in my mind. Maybe no assault and battery charges tonight…

On top of that the guy, who turned out to be shifty looking man in his mid-20’s, kept nearly sideswiping me by trying to get my attention, and it became quite obvious that he was chasing me in hopes of making the fucky. Finally, he managed to get a clear view of me, and I was able to send back the biggest death stare the guy had clearly ever seen because he immediately fell back and stopped pursuing me in what was already a 15 minute car chase at that point. It must have been that same look my kindergarten teacher was going on about all those years ago…

Teacher: Umm… Does Katrina ever give you those looks like… like she can see right through you, and she thinks you’re absolute trash?

Mom: Yeah all the time.

Teacher: Well what can I do about it?!

Mom: Aren’t you supposed to be the teacher?

*Exhale* I really need to find a happy place. These “micro-aggressions,” are starting to eat me alive, and I actually worry if I’m going to be the next one of us to have a mental breakdown sometime in the near future. Apparently this happens a lot, and if it does happen to me it will likely be worse than your everyday, run of the mill mental breakdown. I started playing competitive sports at the age of 4, so from a young age I was taught not to cry. I learned to make, “Shake it off,” my motto, and I seemed to carry that throughout my entire life. I don’t get sad, I get angry. In fact, I only ever cry if I’ve just been consumed by so much rage that my body can’t keep it in anymore. And I do feel myself getting to that point now. Even when my thoughts have wandered off to a nicer place when I’m listening to music or whatever, I can still feel my body raging on despite the fact that my mind is not. Last month I finally decided to see what these popular in-mall massage places were like, and the whole time the therapist kept saying, “Your back is too hard, too hard. Why is it very hard?” I don’t know… Maybe stress.

So what is making me rage these days? Well despite the fact that I pretty much strongly oppose all the latest decisions my company has made, being a minority in a homogenous society can get you down after awhile, too. You see cultural/racial differences here are not regarded as good/interesting things. Japan is the world. And these ideals are especially strong in the rural areas where I reside, just like how rural areas in any country are likelier to be a little less worldly. Western women seem to be regarded as things, namely prostitutes, and, well, as you just read, the very sight of one can prompt a high speed chase. This stuff doesn’t just happen to me, by the way. I know plenty of stories of women being followed while walking down the street as Japanese men yell, “Sex! Sex! Sex!” at them. Hell, my friend and I were at a McDonald’s a couple months ago, and as we were about to leave a little man, who had been sitting at another table studying the entire time, came up to her and told her he wanted to go to take her to a love hotel. And to be fair, this kind of shit does occasionally happen at home, too. I remember quite clearly being chased down by a horny truck driver en route to a Milwaukee Admirals playoff game in Cincinnati during the NHL Lockout of 2004-05.

Anyway, I guess being treated like a thing (not an object, a thing) starts to eat away at you slowly, but I suppose having nothing to live for (i.e. my next hockey road trip) doesn’t help either. I need to find something that will make me happy (or at least distract me) ASAP because if I don’t I’m probably going to make myself sick. I’m already on the warpath to the NHL, and I wouldn’t be surprised, at this point, if I will actually be back home, and front row and centre for puck drop on opening night this October. So, I guess that’s something. Oh, and if you think I’m exaggerating with the whole “warpath” thing, then I refer you now to a conversation with one of my sorority sisters back in the summer of 2005…

Her: Hey, did you know there’s a tropical storm named after you heading towards the US *laughs.*

Me: Oh God. That was a mistake. I’ve never met a Katrina who wasn’t a total bitch. If that doesn’t become one of the worst storms in American history, I’ll be shocked…